Conferences

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

The Euroidentities project held its Final Conference in Brussels, 9-10 February 2011.

The results of each of the five substantive ‘sensitized groups’ work packages – the ‘Educationally mobile’, ‘Transnational workers’, ‘Farmers’, ‘Cultural contacts’ and ‘Civil society organisations’ – were presented and discussed. In addition, there were sessions highlighting two significant groups that emerged during the project’s analysis – ‘External to Europe’ and ‘Intimate relations’ – as well as a closing session that assessed the project’s findings as a whole. The format of the conference was discussion of papers that had been circulated in advance.

The current state-of-the-art research into European identity has been driven almost exclusively by a ‘top down’ elitist perspective that focuses upon the development of an identification with ‘Europe’ through centrally-driven policies originating for the most part from within the European Commission. This session will focus upon biographical research and/or conceptualizations that can provide wider insights into the evolution and meanings of a European identity or identities from the ’bottom up’ perspective of the individual. Biographical identity is neither solely solid and fixed for all time nor completely fluid and contingent but rather a combination of both. Identity functions as an internalized cognitive schema or habitus of stored meanings and modes of reacting to the world that enables one to maintain continuity and remain 'the same' over time. At the same time, identity is a process in which one's self-conception is (re)formed and transformed over time during the course of life experiences that take place within a changing grid of often conflicting multiple groups, interests, loyalties and responsibilities. The retention of a balance between these two -- the need to maintain continuity and the imperative to change -- can be seen as an ongoing biographical process of identity work. We welcome proposed papers, either conceptual and/or research-based, that deal with the question of evolving European identity or identities within these contexts.